House of the Dragon

[KatPurrson]

The off screen noises. So horrifying and heartbreaking.

Where as GofT was a laugh minute! 😂

Rhaenys should so clearly have been Queen.

I loved that episode. I don't really know why, but I genuinely cried with how happy it made me in my geeky little heart.

The Twins, The Hour of the Wolf, Rhaenyra hating having to ask Daemon for help but doing it anyway because she knows it's the right thing to do, Aemond One-Eye, Simon Strong having the sheer balls to call Daemon "King.....Consort", Aemond cutting down the fucking rat-catchers (when do they bring in the cats?), Baela standing up for Rhaenys as an independent badass in her own right, Daemon continuing to fall under Harrenhal's curse, Visenya, The Vale. And the way the camera pulled up to the top of the wall full of rolled parchments when they decided to go looking for the Dragon Seeds in the family trees (I love Jace so much).

Hmm I wasn't quite so moved, @TheQueenWhoNeverWas!

I enjoyed the Freys and the Twins, I like Mysaria and I enjoyed seeing the Eeyrie. (Deffo echoes of the GoT extended breastfeeder in the Lady Jeyne Arryn we saw 🤣. Was it Lesa Arryn?)

I thought Daemon was RIDICULOUS sitting on his dragon talking down to the Brackens (or the Blackwoods - whichever ones didn't end well) - his voice is so reedy and high-pitched! I just can't take him seriously. Was the dream woman he was slobbering over meant to be his mother? Initially I thought it was Aemma.

I wish we saw more of Tyland Lannister and actually Lord Larys - I think he's really well done.

Have to say I think the latest episode was slow and a bit boring! 😩

I rather appreciated the slowness; the careful gathering up of consequences from last week’s hurly-burly. It was fascinating to see the Small People’s reaction to the killing of a sacred … erm, beast. That was an unexpected layer of lore.

And, though I haven’t read the books, I’m excited at the thought of possibly having the various ragtags of bastard offspring all being thrown onto the backs of dragons and ordered to go off and fight. Is that what happens? Presumably they might each have a different attitude to this opportunity?

I much prefer this season to the first!

At the moment Jace and Rhaenyra aren't thinking about bastards, they're thinking of half/quarter Targaryens whose parents/grandparents married out, into the great Westerosi families - and frankly they think this is quite shocking enough to be going on with.

But given that we've been very specifically introduced to a random bloke in a pub who's loudly telling everyone that he's Baelon Targaryen's illegitimate son, I don't think it's a spoiler to say they'll have to cast their net wider eventually.

Is the hot smith with the poorly daughter supposed to be a Targaryen bastard too or is he just coincidentally blond?

I’ve gathered that each of the apparently random individuals who have featured a few times are likely to be either Green or Black unacknowledged royal offspring. The armourer (?), sailor (+ brother?) loud drunkard in the pub. Can’t think of any others …

Hope I’m not completely way off the mark!

No such thing as coincidentally blonde in HotD/GoT, surely 🤣 blondes are either golden-haired Lannisters or platinum-haired Targaryens! I actually can't think of a blonde that wasn't deliberate...

I presume Corlys is going to make his eldest bastard his heir.

Tyrion is platinum blond in the books: cue much fan speculation that he's not actually Tywin's son and is a secret Targ. Presumably that's not actually true otherwise such a big twist would have been played out in the series.

Sorry if stupid question - but are Corlys‘s line dragon riders, or just his offspring with a dragon-riding-line female?

(I haven’t read the books - obviously! Don’t want to read HOD wiki because spoilers.)

I keep getting a sense from that actors that Aemond may in fact have fathered Helaena's children.

I really loved the latest episode.. Alicent being sidelined for the same reason she sidelined Rhaenyra! Also loved the reliably grasping Freys, Baela developing a personality, and the new characters. The visual of Melys's head being paraded through the city was horrifying, as was everybody's sadness at a dragon;s slaughter, but humans not so much!

Daemon is fairly dull with all his dreams and wordplay with Alys Rivers, and I agree that Matt Smith doesn't have much presence. Ewan Mitchell has far more.

Does anyone else agree that Olivia Cooke has one of the most beautiful voices in the world? I coudl listen to her talk all day. I also think Emma D' Arcy is coming into her wn, after not liking her much first season.

Also Daemon';s such a shit father, isn't he? He doesn't appear to say a word to Rhaena and Baela, and he's completely apathetic to his other sons being shipped off over the seas.

I really want Baela and Jace to get married before one or both of them inevitably dies.

The whole Westerosi genetics is based on hair colour, not genes. 🤣 That is how Ned realises that Robert is not the father of Cersei's children.

Tyrion having Targ hair and Shiera Seastar's eyes were a deliberate ploy to keep us speculating. 😁

The Targaryens and Velaryons very heavily intermarried. e.g. Aegon the Conqueror's mother was a Velaryon. So Velaryons could ride a dragon, but I think only the ones who were born with Targaryen surname have one.
Rhaenyra's and Rhaenys's children are exception. I guess because they are both eldest daughters of a king, and there were too few Targaryens around to carry the name. You need dragonriders to maintain order as well.

This is sort of making me want to start watching GoT right from the beginning...I wonder if it's aged well?!

I've now watched the new series of Vikings Valhalla and I don't think it was as a good as the original Vikings, or The Last Kingdom. There a new Rome epic coming out on Prime (I think) very soon though, with Anthony Hopkins of all people - looking forward to that!

The plotting is amazing in Game of Thrones, especially once you get into season 2, but the production values of season 1 need some allowance made for them once you're used to how gorgeous modern TV with an infinite budget can look.

Also the sexposition is really awful.

I'm trying to muster enough interest to watch it before my NOW subscription ends but can only manage about 5 mins at a time before my boredom threshold is reached. So was the latest episode boring despite the apparently scandalous and explicit Daemon bedroom scene??

Bedroom scene had no visual value. It only conveyed that Daemon had complicated issues regarding his mother.

Ah, what a waste!

I was so looking forward to this after devouring GOT from beginning to end.

BUT I’m bored to tears with this so far.
I’ve lost track of the random new characters that keep popping up, the slowness and lack of anything meaningful happening.
The shock and brutality aspects do not replacer the poor quality consistency of plots.
The characters are dull.

I am just not getting as invested in the characters as I did in GOT. I feel very lukewarm towards it.

What I do enjoy is the Shakespearean dialect. There is beautiful use of language.
I will persist with it as I really WANT to enjoy it more.

It's quite a sexy scene, but its aesthetic appeal is overshadowed by the shock factor when you realise what's going on.

Oedipus-y? Why yes he did.